Chapter Fourteen.
Unexpected tidings.
When Roger Hall came home that evening, he was greeted by Christie with an amount of excited enthusiasm which he did not often hear from his little invalid daughter.
“Oh Father, Father! I have a new friend, and such a good, pleasant maid she is!”
Christie did not term her new friend “nice,” as she certainly would have done in the present day. To her ear that word had no meaning except that of particular and precise—the meaning which we still attach to its relative “nicety.”
“A new friend, forsooth?” said Christie’s father with a smile. “And who is she, sweet heart? Is it Mistress Final’s niece, that came to visit her this last week?”
“Oh no, Father! ’Tis somebody much—ever so much grander! Only think, the master’s daughter, Mistress Pandora Roberts, came with her aunt, Mistress Holland; and Mistress Holland went on to Cranbrook, and took Aunt Tabitha with her—she was here when she came—and Mistress Pandora tarried with me, and talked, till her aunt came back to fetch her. Oh, she is a sweet maid, and I do love her!”
Roger Hall looked rather grave. He had kept himself, and even more, his Christie, from the society of outsiders, for safety’s sake. For either of them to be known as a Gospeller, the name then given to the true, firm-hearted Protestants, would be a dangerous thing for their liberties, if not their lives. Pandora Roberts was the daughter of a man who, once a Protestant, had conformed to the Romanised form of religion restored by Queen Mary, and her uncle was one of the magistrates on the Cranbrook bench. Roger was sorry to hear that one so nearly allied to these dangerous people had found his little violet under the leaves where he had hoped that she was safely hidden. A sharp pang shot through his heart as the dread possibility rose before him of his delicate little girl being carried away to share the comfortless prison of his sister. Such treatment would most likely kill her very soon. For himself he would have cared far less: but Christie!
He was puzzled how to answer Christie’s praises of Pandora. He did not wish to throw cold water on the child’s delight, nor to damage her newly found friend in her eyes. But neither did he wish to drag her into the thorny path wherein he had to walk himself—to hedge her round with perpetual cautions and fears and terrors, lest she should let slip some word that might be used to their hurt. An old verse says—
“Ye gentlemen of England
That sit at home at ease,
Ye little know the miseries
And dangers of the seas.”
And it might be said with even greater truth—Ye men and women, ye boys and girls of free, peaceful, Protestant England, ye little know the dangers of life in lands where Popish priests rule, nor the miseries that you will have to endure if they ever gain the ascendancy here again!
Roger Hall had never heard Dr Abernethy’s wise advice—“When you don’t know what to do, do nothing.” But in this emergency he acted on that principle.
“I trust, my dear heart,” he said quietly, “that it may please the Lord to make thee and this young gentlewoman a blessing to each other.”
“Oh, it will, I know, Father!” said Christie, quite unsuspicious of the course of her father’s thoughts. “Only think, Father! she told me first thing, pretty nigh, that she loved the Lord Jesus, and wanted to be like Him. So you see we couldn’t do each other any hurt, could we?”
Roger smiled rather sadly.
“I am scarce so sure of that, my Christie. Satan can set snares even for them that love the Lord; but ’tis true, they be not so like to slip as they that do not. Is this young mistress she that dwelt away from home some years back, or no?”
“She is, Father; she hath dwelt away in the shires, with her grandmother, these five years. And there was a good man there—she told me not his name—that gave her counsel, and he said, ‘To do God’s work is to do God’s will.’ That is good, Father, isn’t it?”
“Good, and very true, sweeting.”
Roger Hall had naturally all the contempt of a trueborn man of Kent for the dwellers in “the shires,” which practically meant everybody in England who was not a native of Kent. But he knew that God had said, “He that despiseth his neighbour sinneth;” so he said in his heart, “Get thee behind me, Satan,” to the bad feeling, and went on to wonder who the good man might be. Had Pandora told the name of that man, half Roger’s doubts and terrors would have taken flight. The name of Master John Bradford of Manchester—the martyr who eighteen months before had glorified the Lord in the fires—would have been an immediate passport to his confidence. But Pandora knew the danger of saying more than was needful, and silently suppressed the name of her good counsellor.
Some days elapsed before Roger was again able to visit Canterbury. They were very busy just then at the cloth-works, and his constant presence was required. But when February began, the pressure was past, and on the first holy-day in that month, which was Candlemas Day, he rode to the metropolitan city of his county on another visit to Alice. On his arm he carried a basket, which held a bottle of thick cream, a dozen new-laid eggs, and a roll of butter; and as he came through Canterbury, he added to these country luxuries the town dainties of a bag of dates and half a pound each of those costly spices, much used and liked at that time—cloves, nutmeg, and cinnamon. On these articles he spent 7 shillings 8 pence—8 pence for the dates, 3 shillings for cinnamon, 2 shillings 6 pence for cloves, and 1 shilling 6 pence for nutmegs. Lastly, he bought a sugarloaf, then an unusual luxury, which cost him 7 pence. The basket was now quite full, and leaving his horse at the Star Inn, he went up to the prison, and struck with his dagger on the great bell, which was then the general mode of ringing it. Every man, except labourers, carried a dagger. The porter had become so accustomed to the sight of Roger, that he usually opened the door for him at once, with a nod of greeting. But this morning, when he looked from the wicket to see who it was, he did not open the door, but stood silently behind it. Roger wondered what this new style of conduct meant.
“May I within, by your good leave, to see my sister?” he asked.
“You may within, if you desire to tarry here, by my Lord’s good leave,” said the porter; “but you’ll not see your sister.”
“Why, what’s ado?” asked Roger in consternation.
“Removed,” answered the porter shortly.
“Whither?”
“Ask me no questions, and I’ll tell you no lies,” was the proverbial reply.
“Lack-a-day! Can I find out?”
The porter elevated his eyebrows, and shrugged his shoulders.
“Come within a moment,” said he.
Roger obeyed, and the porter drew him into his lodge, where he spoke in a cautious whisper.
“Master Hall, you be an honest man; and though I am here found, yet I trust so am I. If you be likewise a wise man, you will find somewhat to keep you at home for the future. Whither Mistress Benden is now taken, I could not tell you if I would: but this can I say, you’ll follow if you have not a care. Be ruled by me, that am dealing by you as by a friend, and keep out of Canterbury when you are out, and let that be as soon as you may. For your good stuff, leave it an’ you will for Mistress Potkin: but if you tarry here, or return and be taken, say not you were not warned. Now, void your basket, and go.”
Like a man dazed or in a dream, Roger Hall slowly emptied his basket of the good things which he had brought for Alice. He was willing enough that Rachel Potkin should have those or any other comforts he could bring her. But that basket had been packed under Christie’s eyes, and in part by Christie’s hands, and the child had delighted herself in the thought of Aunt Alice’s pleasure in every item. And when at last the roll of butter was lifted out, and behind it the eggs which it had confined in a safe corner, and Roger came to the two tiny eggs which Christie had put in with special care, saying, “Now, Father, you’ll be sure to tell Aunt Alice those eggs were laid by my own little hen, and she must eat them her own self, because I sent them to her”—as Roger took out the eggs of Christie’s hen, he could hardly restrain a sob, which was partly for the child’s coming disappointment, and partly caused by his own anxious suspense and distress. The porter had not spoken very plainly—he had probably avoided doing so on purpose—but it was sufficiently manifest that the authorities had their eyes on Roger himself, and that he ran serious risk of arrest if he remained in Canterbury.
But what had they done with Alice? He must find her. Whatever became of him, he must look for Alice.
Roger turned away from the gate of the gaol, sick at heart. He scarcely remembered even to thank the friendly porter, and turned back to repair the omission.
“If you be thankful to me,” was the porter’s significant answer, “look you take my counsel.”
Slowly, as if he were walking in a dream, and scarcely knew where he was going, Roger made his way back to the Star. There all was bustle and commotion, for some people of high rank had just arrived on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Thomas of Canterbury, or rather to the place where the shrine had stood in past ages. King Henry the Eighth had destroyed the shrine, and a soldier had “rattled down proud Becket’s glassy bones,” but the spot where it had been was considered holy, and the poor deluded people even yet sometimes came to worship there, and to make their painful way up the Pilgrims’ Stairs, which they had to ascend on their knees. Those stairs are now to be seen in Canterbury Cathedral, worn by the thousands of knees which went up them, the poor creatures fancying that by this means they would obtain pardon of their sins, or earn a seat in Heaven.
The bustle in the inn rather favoured Roger’s escape. He mounted his horse, tied the basket to his saddle, and rode out of Wincheap Gate, wondering all the while how he could discover the place to which Alice had been removed, and how he should tell Christie. He met several people on the road, but noticed none of them, and reached his own house without having exchanged a word with any one he knew. He let himself in, and with a sinking heart, opened the parlour door.
“Dear heart, Master Hall!” said the voice of Collet Pardue, who was seated by Christie’s couch, “but there’s ill news in your face! What’s ado, prithee?”
“Oh, Father, is Aunt Alice sick?” cried Christie.
Roger came round to the couch, and knelt down, one hand clasping that of his little girl, and the other tenderly laid upon her head.
“My Christie,” he said, “they have taken Aunt Alice away, I know not whither. But our Father knows. Perchance He will show us. But whether or not, all is well with her, for she is in His care that loveth her more than we.”